October 14, 2006

"It was a private world. We dreamed it up. It flowered out of our imaginations."

Richard Hell has an op-ed in the NYT:
It makes me think of that Elvis Presley quotation: “When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times.” We dreamed CBGB’s into existence.
Aw, the sweet, sentimental punk kids -- all grown old, and now their clubhouse has gone. Or... that is...
CBGB’s is going to be dismantled and reconstructed as an exhibit in Las Vegas, like Elvis. I like that. A lot. I really hope it happens as intended.
It's funny -- and another thing that makes my generation seem so old -- that he likes that CBGB's is going to Las Vegas. We all made fun of Elvis for relocating there back in the 70s. It's okay, Hell tells us, to be old and sentimental and nostalgic.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Other quotes from the op-ed piece:

"A horrendous dump....[a] smelly and ugly nowhere...Suicide...the Dictators...Voidoids...Dead Boys...Many of us were drunk or stoned half our waking hours...[It was the] site of conspiracies, orgies, delirium...God likes change and a joke. God loves CBGB's."

The above sounds more like a description of Hell written by a man named Hell.

X said...

I grew up idolizing the first wave of punk rockers and have lived near New York for most of my life, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I never even managed to see a show there-- even my straightlaced sister had her first date with her now-husband there! I came damn close to blowing off a lucrative job to rush up there to see the Talking Heads tribute band when I found out they were closing.

I think a move to Vegas makes a lot of sense-- after all, Downtown and the north strip are way more scary and decadent than the Bowery these days....

Ann Althouse said...

I was just listening to Heart today on the radio ("Barracuda"). I'm willing to concede this is the greatest rock singing in the female category -- even though it's not my favorite style of rock music.